Evolution as an Endless Tease

It’s a scam. Darwinists keep promising rewards but never deliver.
They draw people in with the “mysteries of evolution.”

There comes a time when one has to realize he or she is being taken for a ride. Most people learn quickly about simple scams like the Nigeria hoax, following parents’ advice that “If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” But Darwinian evolution is more sophisticated. Darwinians don’t promise to make you rich; they promise that elusive treasure, “understanding.” Day after day, year after year, decade after decade, they tell us that some new bone or molecule or gene is “shedding light on evolution,” bringing the promised understanding closer and closer. It never comes. The mysteries remain.

It’s time for rational people to get out of the Darwin-mobile and walk on their own two feet. These scammers have abdicated all trust.

Not only that, the hopeful clues Darwinians once advertised keep getting overturned, leading to a major “rethink” with the infamous phrase, “than thought” — “the system is more complex than thought” or “this animal evolved earlier than thought,” etc. The promised understanding always stays out of reach, like a trophy at the top of the down escalator.

Fight or Flight? How Birds Are Helping to Reveal the Mysteries of Evolution (University of Massachusetts at Amherst, 24 Feb 2022). This scam is for the birds. Notice the tease about the “mysteries of evolution”? And we thought that evolution was a fact beyond any need of further evidence.

New research from the University of Massachusetts Amherst uncovers the negative link between flightworthiness and fight-worthiness in birds. Evolutionary pressure demanded that birds could either fly or arm themselves—but not both. Furthermore, the new research suggests that developing wings and not bony spurs involved both sexual and natural selection. This insight helps us better understand how the enormous diversity of life on earth came to be.

Let’s get this straight. They say, “Beetles do it, deer do it, even crabs in the sea do it. But birds don’t. Carry weapons that is.” What? Birds have beaks that can peck your eyes out. Peregrine falcons can capture prey in mid-air at high speed, and eagles (and many other birds) can pluck fish out of a lake with their talons or dive and catch them. What are they talking about?

It turns out that, although the vast majority of birds are unarmed, a small percentage, 1.7% do pack weapons in the form of bony spurs on their legs. To measure different species’ flight aptitude, the researchers relied on the hand-wing index, or HWI, an enormous dataset that evaluates more than 10,000 species of birds and which lets researchers compare how efficiently different birds are at taking wing.

Oh good grief. HWI? That fabricated acronym should mean “hand-waving index” in evolutionary practice. Look at the other flyers: insects (stings on bumblebees are specialized weapons, right?), pterosaurs (my, what big teeth you have), and bats (ditto). Who says that leg spurs are the only weapons a bird can have? Talons and beaks are pretty effective. Birds can put up quite a defense. Ever play “Angry Birds”?

Another tactic of Darwin scammers is to apply the Stuff Happens Law recklessly to tell a just-so story about any observation and call it science. These storytellers claim that “the most heavily armed fighters tend to struggle in the air” – oh, yeah? Have  they seen raptors lately? Peregrine falcons dive-bombing at up to 240 mph? The storyteller opens up the Just-So Storybook, enters a trance and speculates, ramping up the perhapsimaybecouldness index:

To answer that, the researchers ran a number of simulations and models, which showed that bony spurs could impose a heavy evolutionary cost. While it’s true that weapons, like plumage, dancing and the ability to sing helps attract a mate and so are an advantage in sexual selection, the spurs make flying a more energy-intensive activity. Though it’s remarkably difficult to pin down exactly how this affected the course of evolution, it seems likely that spurs decreased an individual’s ability to fly fast, far and takeoff easily. This is where natural selection should kick in: spurs might make birds more likely to get eaten or require more food to meet their daily energy requirements, while their unspurred counterparts can get away, eat less and live to breed another day.

Notice the tactic that they’re trying to use on you. They promise understanding about the “mysteries of evolution.” They engage in science-y busy work counting birds with spurs and those without spurs. While keeping critical thinkers who might ask logical questions out of the soundproof room, they pull out their magic wands: natural selection and sexual selection. They tell a tale: it might be this selection pressure, or it could be that selection pressure, but “it’s remarkably difficult to pin down exactly how this affected the course of evolution.” No matter what stuff happens, it’s always evolution! One possible answer is said to be “likely” (to the storyteller) without any probability metrics supplied. But keep the funding coming, and some day your trust in our expertise will pay big dividends in understanding!

Don’t be a sucker. They only “mystery of evolution” is why any critical thinker would fall for it.

Rapid evolution fuels transcriptional plasticity in fish species to cope with ocean acidification (University of Hong Kong, 3 March 2022). Even the biologists in Hong Kong have succumbed to the Darwin storytelling cult. They repeat the e-word evolution and its derivatives like a mantra 15 times in a short press release. The article reveals another Darwin Party tactic: say that evolution is fast, except when it is slow. That way the Stuff Happens Law can explain everything.

The study here indicated some fish species that evolve more rapidly may have a flexible way to cope with OA [ocean acidification], which should be helpful for these species to maintain their population size and biodiversity. However, for some other species evolving slowly, OA will be difficult for them once the OA level is beyond their tolerance levels.

One can feel the “understanding” rising like a cloud of intoxicating incense, known as fogma.

Which way to understanding? The sucker uses its fake eye to follow the Darwinist. The critical thinker goes the other direction. [Corel Pro Photos]

“It has been quite puzzling why some species struggle more than others with ocean acidification conditions. Our expedition to this remote CO₂ vent site allowed us to look at many fish species that live naturally in these elevated CO₂ conditions and complete parts of the puzzle,” Dr Celia Schunter remarked, “we see that possibly limited by slow evolution, some fish species may not be flexible when responding to elevated CO₂ conditions and struggle more.”

“Species that evolve more rapidly may have a flexible way to cope with ocean acidification, which should be helpful for these species to maintain their population size and biodiversity. However, for some other species evolving more slowly, ocean acidification will be difficult for them once the pH level beyond their abilities to maintain their acid-base balance. Previously we did not understand why some species struggled and others didn’t as much and understanding why some may be ‘winners’ or ‘losers’ is important so we can protect especially the ones that will not be able to cope and to keep the balance in the ecosystem,” added Dr Schunter.

Understanding is important, they say. That’s why you need to keep your living trust invested in the Darwin scam. How else would you ever get the coveted understanding, if you didn’t have the Darwin Party experts to help? See; they understand. “Previously we did not understand,” they say, but now they do. Now they understand how the Stuff Happens Law works. It produces winners that evolve by “fast evolution” and losers who evolve by “slow evolution.” Whatever happens, it’s evolution. That’s why it is also important to censor the critical thinkers.

But wait; aren’t they all surviving? Doesn’t that make them all fit by definition? Doesn’t the battle hymn say—

O the fit will be survivors and survivors will be fit,
And survivors will survive to prove the fitness of the fit;
O this natural selection, it’s so simple, isn’t it?
‘Tis ruthless marching on.

Sad that the slow learners in the School of Fish didn’t catch onto how to evolve faster. They just didn’t understand. They lacked understanding, because they didn’t have an official Darwin Party facilitator to bring it to them.

Human students, though, had better understand what the Darwin Party is doing in biology class so that they don’t fall for this scam hook, line, and sinker.